Checked 18 September 2026 on each operator's or ministry's own site · skynomad
Verdict
Only in the eight countries that sell motorway time.
Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania want a vignette on the car before you join the motorway. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Greece charge at a barrier or by camera instead. Drive from Salzburg to Verona and you swap systems at the Brenner Pass.
The price on the official site is small. The reseller's is two or three times it.
Vignette prices 2026: the eight countries that sell time
Prices are for a car up to 3.5 tonnes, checked on the operator's or the ministry's own site on 18 September 2026.
Country
Shortest option
One year
Official site
Austria
1 day, €9.60
€106.80
asfinag.at
Switzerland
none sold
CHF 40
via.admin.ch
Czechia
1 day, CZK 230
CZK 2,570
edalnice.gov.cz
Slovakia
1 day, €8.10
€90 (365 days)
eznamka.sk
Slovenia
7 days, €16
€117.50
evinjeta.dars.si
Hungary
1 day, HUF 5,550
HUF 61,760
nemzetiutdij.hu
Bulgaria
1 day, €5.30
€64.50
bgtoll.bg
Romania
not verified
not verified
erovinieta.ro
Format varies more than the price does. Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria are plate-based and digital; nothing goes on the glass. Switzerland still sells a real sticker alongside the e-vignette, and you choose.
Romania is the one I could not price at source. CNAIR's tariff pages would not load on any attempt on 18 September 2026, and I will not copy a rovinieta price off a reseller and call it official. Buy it at erovinieta.ro, CNAIR's own portal, and read the figure there.
Austria: where the vignette is valid at once
✓
At a counter: valid at oncePetrol stations, tobacconists and motoring club counters sell the digital vignette valid immediately, and the 2026 sticker while this year lasts.
✓
Online, 1 day or 10 days: valid at once€9.60 for a day, €12.80 for ten days, from ASFINAG's own shop.
!
Online, 2 months or a year: valid after 18 days€32.00 or €106.80, and it only starts on the 18th day after you buy it.
The 18-day trap
This one catches people who did everything right. Buy the two-month or annual digital vignette online and it is not valid for 18 days: fourteen days of EU distance-selling withdrawal rights plus three days that ASFINAG allows for the post. The Austrian consumer ministry says the waiting period cannot be waived on an online purchase. The one-day and ten-day vignettes are the exception, valid at once even online (re-checked on oesterreich.gv.at on 30 September 2026).
Leaving within a fortnight? Don't buy the annual one online. I'd take the ten-day vignette, or buy at a petrol station counter before the border.
Switzerland and Slovenia: no short option at all
CHF 40 buys the 2026 Swiss vignette and nothing else, valid from 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027, so a single afternoon on the A2 costs the same as a year of them. Slovenia has no daily either: seven days for €16 is the floor.
The reseller swarm around every official vignette site
Search for any of these vignettes and the official site is rarely the first result. It is surrounded by sites with names built out of the words you typed: vignette plus the country, e-vignette plus a suffix, the official name with a different ending. Most are real. The vignette arrives and it works. You have simply paid two or three times the price for a form you could have filled in yourself in four minutes.
Memorise the domain, not the design. Czechia's is a .gov.cz address. Switzerland's e-vignette is sold at via.admin.ch and at e-vignette.ch, which the customs office lists as its own address. Slovenia's is a subdomain of dars.si, the motorway company. Bulgaria's bgtoll.bg belongs to the Road Infrastructure Agency. Anything else is a reseller, whatever the flag icons say.
I buy each one the week before I leave, from the table above, and I never use a search engine to get there.
What being caught costs, country by country
Austria: replacement toll, payable within four weeks€200
Austria: if you ignore it, the demand letter€365
Austria: contest that, and the penalty notice€300–€3,000
Switzerland: fine, plus the CHF 40 vignette you still oweCHF 200
Czechiaup to CZK 20,000
Slovakiaup to €200
Slovenia€300
Hungary: surcharge, paid within 60 daysHUF 27,790
Hungary: surcharge after 60 daysHUF 95,730
Bulgaria: compensatory fee, since 1 August 2026€46.50
Austria's replacement toll for a car rose from €120 on 1 January 2026. Hungary works on a surcharge instead of a fine, and Bulgaria's fee settles the matter without one. All of it is camera-enforced against the plate. In a hire car the notice reaches the rental company, which pays it, charges you, and adds an administration fee of its own on top.
France to Greece: barriers, booths and a few free roads
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Greece run barriers. For a visitor the answer is nearly always the same: take the ticket, pick a lane marked with a card symbol, tap, go. Croatia's operator lists cash and Visa, Mastercard and Maestro at every plaza. Greece charges a flat fee per station rather than by distance: Attiki Odos around Athens is €2.80 for a car, and staffed lanes take cards.
Spain has no vignette at all, and its own government portal says so in one line. The AP motorways that still charge take euro cash, a card, or a Via-T tag. Poland barely charges cars any more: since 1 July 2023 vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes pay nothing on the state-run motorways. Three concession stretches still do charge, and the A4 between Katowice and Kraków wants PLN 18 at each of its two plazas, PLN 36 for the full run, and only until 16 March 2027, when the state takes the road back and cars stop paying.
Low-emission zones are a separate bill entirely, and they are the one that actually stops you at a city boundary: see France, Italy and Spain. The trip planner on ParkingInEurope lists the zones on a route.
France and Italy: free-flow tolls that arrive after you get home
Free-flow sections have no barrier and no warning. Cameras read the plate at motorway speed and the payment is your job afterwards.
France has three: the A79 in the Allier, the A13 and A14 between Paris and Normandy, and the Boulay interchange on the A4. The ministry's deadline is 72 hours, paid at the operator's site (sanef.com for the A13, A14 and A4, aliae.com for the A79) or in cash at a Nirio shop. Miss it and the notice carries a €90 surcharge, cut to €10 if you settle within 15 days. Leave it two months and a €375 fixed fine lands on top.
Italy's free flow is the Pedemontana Lombarda north of Milan. Its own terms give you 15 consecutive calendar days from the day of travel to pay at pedemontana.com. Croatia is going the same way: Crolibertas will let cars be charged by plate recognition across all 1,338 tolled kilometres, though its own site publishes no start date yet.
The pattern I watch for is a gantry with no booth under it. If you drive under one, the clock has started.
Portugal: the motorways that bill your hire car months later
Portugal's ex-SCUT motorways (the A22 in the Algarve, the A24, A25, A28 and their relatives) have no booths at all, and a foreign plate with nothing registered against it simply accrues a debt. The rental desk usually says nothing, then charges the card months later with fees attached.
Infraestruturas de Portugal runs the fix, and its site now answers at pttolls.com (portugaltolls.com redirects there).
Product
What it costs
How it works
EASYToll
€1, plus €0.32 a journey
Links your bank card to the plate, valid 30 days
TOLLcard
€5, €10, €20 or €40, plus €0.32 a journey
Prepaid
Go Toll (Via Verde)
€0.77 a month, plus €0.32 a journey
The monthly charge applies only in months you drive
None of them covers the two Lisbon bridges. Skip all three and the transport regulator's rule applies: pay within five working days at an authorised point, or the fine is 7.5 times the toll and never less than €25, per passage. A week in the Algarve can turn a €14 motorway bill into three figures.
What a toll badge is actually worth
A French Ulys badge costs nothing to set up, €2.20 in any month you use it, and nothing in months you do not. It opens the yellow t lanes in France, works on the free-flow sections automatically, and takes an option for Spain and Portugal or for Italy.
For two weeks and one crossing of France, a contactless card at the barrier does the same job. I fit the badge when the trip includes the A13, the Pedemontana or Portugal, the places where there is no barrier to stop at and no cashier to hand a card to. What you are really buying is a bill that pays itself on the roads with no barrier.
Where to leave the car, from our sister site. Each card is the short version; the full guide has every car park, the tow pound and the charging points.
ParkingInEurope
Salzburg
Free all day Sunday, three hours on Saturday, and every central garage is 2.05 metres.
Best bet
Park & Ride, €15.00 a day, and the ticket includes the bus into town — at Messezentrum, Salzburg Süd, the Designer Outlet or the airport. At Salzburg Süd, parking alone is €6.00 for 24 hours.
Watch out
Every central garage is 2.05–2.10 m. With a ski box or roof box on the car you will not get into the Mönchsberg, and you find out at the barrier. P+R Alpenstraße Süd clears 5 m.
Ninety kilometres of motorway at 100 km/h, then a ski bus that costs nothing.
Best bet
P+R Olympiaworld, €21.00 a day — and that one ticket covers up to five people on every IVB bus and tram in the core zone, 06:00–24:00. A carload of skiers cannot beat it.
Watch out
100 km/h, not 130, on about 90 km of the A12 from the German border to Zirl. Permanent, year-round, six fixed radar units. This is the drive in from Munich.
Twenty-three districts, one short-stay zone, two hours maximum.
Best bet
Park & Ride, €4.60 for 24 hours, at Erdberg (U3), Hütteldorf (U4), Spittelau (U4/U6) or Perfektastraße (U6). No transport ticket needed for the day rate.
Watch out
The Kurzparkzone covers all 23 districts, Mon–Fri 09:00–22:00, two hours maximum. No ticket or a wrongly filled one: €50.
The blue zones have no meters. Your phone is the meter, and it gives you one hour.
Best bet
P+R, 50 Kč for 24 hours at Chodov, Zličín, Opatov, Nové Butovice or Černý Most, then 10 Kč an hour. You must be able to show a PID transport ticket you actually used that day. Holešovice is 100 Kč.
Watch out
Blue zones have no parking meters. Payment is online only, and in Prague 1 a visitor gets one hour a day at 80 Kč, charged 08:00–06:00 including Sunday. A flat phone means you cannot legally park.
Your car can be clean enough and still be fined. The zone reads a Polish register your plate is not in.
Best bet
A park and ride, and the 10 zł ticket is also your tram ticket — multiple journeys, zone I, all day, for one person. Four hours on the kerb in subzone A is 39 zł by comparison. P+R Czerwone Maki runs 04:30 to 02:30 and is staffed around the clock.
Watch out
Register the car before you leave home. Kraków's clean transport zone has covered about 60% of the city since 1 January 2026, and a foreign-registered car must enrol at sct.zdmk.krakow.pl even when it fully complies. Verification takes up to 14 days. Fine up to 500 zł.
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